My EARLIEST CHRISTMASTIME MEMORY is sitting in Pop and Mom’s (my Grandparents) home at 506 Sumner Street, Akron, OH, and watching a black and white television at precisely 5:35PM on Channel 5, WEWS, when
Mr. Jingeling came on in a short segment in the Captain Penney children’s show during Xmas. He was a decidedly grotesque figure, but he held out the promise that on “Halle’s 7th Floor” in Cleveland that he would be with Santa & would be waiting to give out the keys to our presents. There was a song and a promise. Well, I never made it to the 7th floor of Halle’s, but it’s really the store featured in A Christmas Story. Watch out for those (kinds of) elves.
THERE WERE MAGICAL STOREFRONTS in Akron in those days, and just as people today might go to the Christmas lights at a Zoo, parents brought their kids downtown to see mechanized Christmas scenes, some with toys, some with Santa and elves, some with train sets. O’Neill’s and Polsky’s Department Stores (“Dept. stores”) competed for the most wondrous depictions of a child’s view of Christmas joy. (Notice how the old stores had a “‘s” in their names?) Today’s mall shopping cannot capture how enthralling this cinematic experience was for kids–most people had never been to Disney World or seen a Pixar animation. A snowy night, dropped off to meet my mom, Betty Lou, after her bookkeeping shift at Akron Dime Bank, and seeing the windows and getting a grilled cheese and fountain Coke at Scott’s (replaced by stadium where the Akron Aeros now play) was the best pre-Christmas night ever. I would have been 7 or 8. I can still feel her hand clutching, tugging at my arm to make sure I couldn’t be stolen from her.
WHAT I STILL REMEMBER MOST STRONGLY FROM CHILDHOOD CHRISTMASTIME is the series of endearing shopping trips with Pop, my grandfather, Robert J. Klever, after he got home from making tires all day at Goodyear, late into the night (9PM was late then) at the various shops around Akron, buying secret stuff for Mom, Betty Lou, and Bruce Sr. (while scouting some for me), and the marathon gift-wrapping sessions we’d have afterwards at his house, which was right behind mine. We’d wrap them and carefully distribute them, some at 497 Rentschler, some at 546 Sumner Street, under the trees. And hide a few back for some surprises Christmas Eve. And that tree—Pop had a silver tree with colored ornaments but most importantly and uniquely for our neighborhood, a color wheel, that shined rainbow Xmas colors against those aluminum branches. He also had special bulb ornaments he kept in the attic and brought down just after Thanksgiving every year; when they heated up started to spin. I could watch for hours, and if I fell a sleep, he’d just carry me up to Mom’s room and I’d stay there till morning. Each part of Christmas back then seem to have its own timing, rhythm, and pacing, and nothing was to disturb the pleasure of the order in which things should be done. Somehow, shopping on Amazon isn’t the same.
BING CROSBY AND A WHITE CHRISTMAS. Joan has mentioned recently how the season at her house growing up, as it was with mine, was driven by how TV prepared us all for “feeling Christmassy.” Those TV specials, especially the ones headed by old-time Hollywood stars like Bing Crosby, and headlining singing stars like Andy Williams or Johnny Mathis, would be essential to the season’s fun and anticipation, no matter how artificial the sentiment may have been. It was not artificial to us. There was the Charlie Brown Christmas and Rudolph specials, of course, but most of the TV time was spent on songs, songs, and more songs. It is amazing how much Christmas music and sing-a-long there was on TV and how little there is now, unless it’s on the Hallmark Channel. Listening to Bing Crosby’s 40s and 50s Christmas radio broadcasts on Sirius-XM satellite is more than a dose of nostalgia; it’s a reminder of how accustomed our culture was used to treating Christmas as a national religious and not just warm-feeling holiday. What could it mean for Bing to ask his national radio-tv audience to join in festively and devotedly to a Latin verse of Adeste Fideles, O Come Ye Faithful “born the King of Angels”?
MY EARLIEST CHRISTMAS MEMORY FOR OUR FAMILY has to be waiting for Matthew to arrive. His due date
was around Christmas, 1974. We lived in St. James, Missouri, and both his grandparents and maternal grandparents made the trip for Christmas to wait for him to be born. Matt kept them waiting and waiting, and they stayed as long as they could, but had to drive back to Akron, because Grandpa Bruce Sr. had to get back to work. Finally, our “Christmas baby” arrived on January 8, 1975 (!), and Grandpa and Grandma Edwards quickly made plans to return drive to Missouri about a week later so excited they were to see him in person! That was a late but grand Christmas present! Matt, I mean.
THOSE BITTER BROWNS MEMORIES. I count this as a Christmas memory, because it is inseparable from that unique period in our lives known as graduate school in Texas. On an unusually brutal, cold, January 4th Sunday in Austin, TX, 1980, Matt now almost 5, Mary 2 1/2, and Justin three months away, we together watched the Browns lose to the Raiders on Red Right 88, the famous play in which Brian Sipe is intercepted in the dying seconds of the game that would have sent them to the AFC Championship and, likely, Super Bowl. I couldn’t talk for several hours, and turned down several phone calls, just to mourn. The Cardiac Kids couldn’t do it one more time. John Madden’s team won instead, and he went on to beat the Chargers, then the Eagles, and soon started his broadcasting career and a video game that made him a mogul. Thus started our shared painful almost-but-never to be championship affection and devotion for all Cleveland teams that has yet to result in a final game victory in any sport.
WASHINGTON DC CHRISTMASES! How strange was it that one year after spending Christmas in DC for the same of my 9 month stay at the Heritage Foundation, we returned, and stayed at the Hilton Inn on a snowy, snowy weekend, just so we could relive and revisit our adventure? On the first DC Christmas in 1989, we opened presents in the car on the way down, and I remember Mary getting a Transformer that turned into a cassette player. We were all excited to get a real tree in DC and put it in our big picture window at English Ivy Way, shopping at what seemed then like the biggest mall ever at Pentagon City, and also at the Ikea in Woodbridge, VA. The second trip down, we forgot that there would not be any place to eat on Christmas day except at the 7-Eleven and at the movie theatre near the Springfield Mall. I think we saw the original Home Alone that visit in DC. Wow.
KENYAN CHRISTMAS! How could this not be a wonder-filled reflection? Having everyone fly into Nairobi for Christmas with a stop in Amsterdam? I remember being so nervous about the flights for Mary, Matt, and Tracey, and the anticipation for seeing them flow through the customs gate at JKO, waiting, watching, bursting into tears for a head to bob up of one of our beloveds, coming so far! And the joyous ride back from Daystar’s bus and Purity’s kindness, bringing us a never-to-be-repeated Christmas time in our African home. Lugging all those special presents from the USA, including DreamCast! Amazing. As was our trek to Mombasa and our beach time, camel time, soccer time, and resort time thereafter. Could there be more magical times as a family than these? (Why isn’t there a TV series about us?) And, oh, the strange fears about Y2K travel back home, when Mary lost her CD collection in the Schiphol Airport! And Justin waving goodbye and leaving me, mom, and Mike to ride out the year! Bursting into tears again. Wow.
XMAS SONG. Can’t help thinking about this song every Christmas Eve, as its season-clashing sentiment make it the most iconic, ironic Christmas song ever to become popular and muzak-enough to appear on Now That’s What I Mean By Christmas! compilations.
A DREAM. This one is not a memory but a DREAM for the future, a prayer, a hope. Next Christmas (2010), let’s try to gather everyone, children and grandchildren alike, in good old NW Ohio for a Christmas Eve and Christmas Day never to be forgotten, however we have to juggle calendars and flights. That present to us will supercede any gifts that you might think of 12 months from now. Think about it, pray about it, plan about it, and let us help in any way we can to get 100% of Edwardses on board. Just a humble Christmas wish. xoxoxoxo, forever, amen.
My EARLIEST CHRISTMASTIME MEMORY is sitting in Pop and Mom’s (my Grandparents) home at 506 Sumner Street, Akron, OH, and watching a black and white television at precisely 5:35PM on Channel 5, WEWS, when 
how the old stores had a “‘s” in their names?) Today’s mall shopping cannot capture how enthralling this cinematic experience was for kids–most people had never been to Disney World or seen a Pixar animation. A snowy night, dropped off to meet my mom, Betty Lou, after her bookkeeping shift at Akron Dime Bank, and seeing the windows and getting a grilled cheese and fountain Coke at Scott’s (replaced by stadium where the Akron Aeros now play) was the best pre-Christmas night ever. I would have been 7 or 8. I can still feel her hand clutching, tugging at my arm to make sure I couldn’t be stolen from her.
shops around Akron, buying secret stuff for Mom, Betty Lou, and Bruce Sr. (while scouting some for me), and the marathon gift-wrapping sessions we’d have afterwards at his house, which was right behind mine. We’d wrap them and carefully distribute them, some at 497 Rentschler, some at 546 Sumner Street, under the trees. And hide a few back for some surprises Christmas Eve. And that tree—Pop had a silver tree with colored ornaments but most importantly and uniquely for our neighborhood, a color wheel, that shined rainbow Xmas colors against those aluminum branches. He also had special bulb ornaments he kept in the attic and brought down just after Thanksgiving every year; when they heated up started to spin. I could watch for hours, and if I fell a sleep, he’d just carry me up to Mom’s room and I’d stay there till morning. Each part of Christmas back then seem to have its own timing, rhythm, and pacing, and nothing was to disturb the pleasure of the order in which things should be done. Somehow, shopping on Amazon isn’t the same.
Rudolph specials, of course, but most of the TV time was spent on songs, songs, and more songs. It is amazing how much Christmas music and sing-a-long there was on TV and how little there is now, unless it’s on the Hallmark Channel. Listening to Bing Crosby’s 40s and 50s Christmas radio broadcasts on Sirius-XM satellite is more than a dose of nostalgia; it’s a reminder of how accustomed our culture was used to treating Christmas as a national religious and not just warm-feeling holiday. What could it mean for Bing to ask his national radio-tv audience to join in festively and devotedly to a Latin verse of Adeste Fideles, O Come Ye Faithful “born the King of Angels”?
prayer, a hope. Next Christmas (2010), let’s try to gather everyone, children and grandchildren alike, in good old NW Ohio for a Christmas Eve and Christmas Day never to be forgotten, however we have to juggle calendars and flights. That present to us will supercede any gifts that you might think of 12 months from now. Think about it, pray about it, plan about it, and let us help in any way we can to get 100% of Edwardses on board. Just a humble Christmas wish. xoxoxoxo, forever, amen.
It might be hard for us to get a flight from Findlay…
Why don’t they have a tv show about us? HA!!!!
2010, 1156!